Aviation regulations require commercial passenger aircraft to carry a life vest (or “life jacket”) for each passenger. The life vest must be accessible to the passenger for use in the event of an emergency. In order to comply with these regulations, a life vest is usually stowed under each seat in a commercial passenger aircraft.
Life vest stowage devices are available for stowing life vests under aircraft seats. Regulations require that a passenger is able to remove a life vest from a life vest stowage device by application of a force of no greater than 6 N. They also require that the life vest should remain stowed in the life vest stowage device in the event of the aircraft suffering an impact of up to 16 G. Life vest stowage devices in current use therefore have closures that allow easy removal of a life vest whilst otherwise firmly retaining the life vest in the device.
Security requirements for life vest stowage devices are also becoming increasingly stringent. For example, all unsealed life vest stowage devices must have their life vests removed and be manually searched prior to an aircraft departing to enter or leave United States air space. A life vest is therefore typically secured in a life vest stowage device by a security seal. The security seal can be checked by airline ground crew to see whether or not it has been tampered with, thereby avoiding the need to search life vest stowage devices with intact security seals. With the life vest stowed and the security seal in place, it is important that access cannot be gained to the inside of the life vest stowage device, so that no foreign objects can be secreted inside the device in breach of aircraft security.
In view of the various aviation regulations and security requirements, increasingly complex closures and security seals have come into use. These closures and security seals can be time consuming to handle, leading to increased costs for airlines. There is therefore a need to provide simplified arrangements that require less time for airline ground crew to check and maintain whilst still being in conformity with the appropriate aviation regulations and security requirements.